July Meeting Agenda

The Theme Review Team holds a monthly meeting with an agenda and we encourage all members to attend.

Channel: #themereview | Time: Tuesday at 17:00 UTC 17:00 UTC

Topics to discuss

Community Behaviour / Code of Conduct

Proposal: WordPress Community Conduct Project

Name collisions

Currently the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ Theme Updates APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. only uses the theme slug to check for updates. This can cause conflicts if a theme outside of WordPress.org repo has the same theme slug. The two main issues are:

Name collisions are bad for end users if they update to different theme.
The number of active installs have an affect on the position of theme on the popular page.

In the past we have decided not to police theme names other than “WordPress” and “Theme” which have been added as checks to the upload process.

The root cause for this issue is that the WordPress.org Themes API only checks the theme slug when checking for updates or tracking number of installs. The CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Ticket for this is #14179-core. The core track ticket has been opened a number of years ago and it is not going to be fixed unless we get buy in from the core and metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. teams.

There are a few short term solutions that we can implement but they require support from the meta team. The meta ticket for this is #2114-meta. These solutions are

Change the algorithm of the popular page so that it is not so heavily dependant on number of installs.
Deduct the initial number of active installs from the current active installs. This does not help if two themes are gaining new users together.
When measuring the number of active installs compare the author field. The number of installs may be slightly off for themes that have been transferred from one author to another but these numbers should be minimal as they would be only users running older versions of the theme.

The solution that we can implement as of now is: If any theme name has any more than 500 active installs then that theme would need to be renamed.

This would not retroactively apply to existing live themes. Removing the themes would affect the users which we do not want. The short term solutions will fix this for the existing themes.
This wouldn’t apply in those cases where the theme author has had the theme released for a while and a quick Google search doesn’t pull up alternatives.

Monthly meeting with meta team

Currently there are 44 open meta tickets for the components “Theme Directory” and “Theme Review”

By having a monthly meeting we can track the progress of these tickets and define which ticket should be prioritized.

Discussions on improvements outside the meetings

There have been a number of discussions in the SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. #themereview channel which have lead to turning in circles. Unless there is a meeting these discussion will not go anywhere. If there is a topic to discuss please mention it for the next meeting.

The Theme Review process is not perfect. Here are a list of projects in addition to the meta tickets mentioned about that are known but have not had anyone to lead them.

The structure for solving the problems that we would like to try is

In the meetings we can discuss if it is this a problem that needs to be addressed (regardless of the team that addresses it)?
If yes then we collect proposals for addressing it.
The we decide which one of these proposals should we pursue?” and then commit to pursuing the winning proposal

Mentoring

@thinkupthemes has created a list on the mentor’s availability.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ClUWZoNIIqKYmdgb08QRNWUmgebhxM-f3mm-9FqC6Kw/edit#gid=0

#14179-core, #2114-meta

Rinku Y 4:07 am on July 25, 2017

May be, we can add one more topic: Featured Theme Page

== About Featured Theme Page ==

As name, Featured theme page should display really top quality and popular themes, not just 15 random.

What we have: Theme name, total download, active install, rating (Theme name and total downloads are not going to help)

So, there will be total 15 random themes which follow Requirements:
1. Active Installs 1000 or more
2. Rated 5 or more times.
3. Rating should be 4 or more.
4. Themes updated within 6 months because WordPress give us a major update within 6 months. (now it is 2 year).
5. List should refresh each time instead once in a day. so WordPress user can refresh page, if he does not find good theme.
. Theme should not have any upsell or credit links. (no any external links, links to WordPress will not count), (Problem: how to automate it, Second: may be remove it ) Overall need discussion.
.
.
. – New Idea –
.
.

NOTE: All above data should be real, not gaming. TRT will regularly check, find Spam authors and take serious action like suspend this theme / author permanently.

Also, there will be a list of all popular themes on a page generated by same algorithm, so Any theme reviewer can review any theme anytime or base on reported by someone.

i think, it will really display featured themes instead just 15 random from directory.
- Carolina Nymark 10:15 am on July 25, 2017
  
  You need find or create a metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. ticket for your suggestion, to enable us and the other teams like meta to work on it.
  - Rinku Y 2:09 pm on July 25, 2017
    
    Yes, but this is just my initial ideas. first we need to discuss it.
wpHoot 6:08 am on July 25, 2017

Is there a quick way to check active installs of a theme not yet on .org
Can this be done using wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.? (https://api.wordpress.org/)

I have a new theme in development. I know there was a theme with the same name (around 5-6 years old). I dont suspect it to have too many active installs, but would like to check just to be sure.
- ilovewpcom 8:14 am on July 25, 2017
  
  I believe that info is (intentionally) not available publicly in order to prevent gaming of the system.
- Ulrich 1:50 pm on July 25, 2017
  
  I can have a look if we can add the functionality somewhere. Please open a metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. ticket for this.
  
  The idea would be that you could see if the theme slug has more or less than 500 active installs.
dingdang 11:05 am on July 25, 2017
Regarding the name collisions my proposal is here (Versions 2 at the bottom):

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/14179

Brief description of the algorithm:
- create a “fingerprint” for all past, current and new versions of every active theme and store only unique values in a table (the total number of unique values = active themes multiplied by 1.16, after analysis)
- to create a “fingerprint” the theme slug and author are sufficient (after analysis)
- those two entries are being sent to the APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. since at least WP3.0 may be earlier (i.e. backward compatibility)
- the fingerprint contains the slug with possibility to extract it unambiguously
- the API checks and identifies if a theme is “native” for wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ using the fingerprints table
- only if the theme is “native” the API sends back update data and counts it as an “active install”
Benefits:
- extremely simple
- no need to “patch” anything with temporary solutions or change algorithms
- backward compatibility
- no need to change WP coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., only changes in API
- doesn’t add any cpu load
- solves automatically every related problem even past cases (old themes collisions don’t collide anymore, counted active installs are automatically corrected to their real values)
- no problems if the author for a theme is changed (ex: theme acquisition)
- since there is no change in protocols, the implementation in different subsystems (API, counter, metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress.) doesn’t have to be simultaneous
smartcat 7:35 pm on July 25, 2017

One potential issue with the 500 active install limit – most theme shops begin to advertise their free theme as soon as they finish building it, not when it goes live in w.org

Any theme that we push for free on our site and through newsletters will end up racking up a few hundred free users by the time the theme is reviewed. Couple of themes we launched with that had unique names already had 500+ users during the time they were in the queue.

Will that be an issue ?
- Joy 7:46 pm on July 28, 2017
  
  It is for initial upload, not at review time.

Welcome to the Themes team!

Handbooks and review requirements

Coding standards and plugins

Code Packages

Communication

July Meeting Agenda

Topics to discuss

Community Behaviour / Code of Conduct

Name collisions

Monthly meeting with meta team

Discussions on improvements outside the meetings

Mentoring

Welcome to the Themes team!

Handbooks and review requirements

Coding standards and plugins

Code Packages

Communication

Topics to discuss

Community Behaviour / Code of Conduct

Name collisions

Monthly meeting with meta team

Discussions on improvements outside the meetings

Mentoring

Share this: